


wild women don't get the blues

by midnightroom



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Character Study, Sisters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2019-02-17 10:26:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13074918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnightroom/pseuds/midnightroom
Summary: Kali didn't cry; she screamed.





	wild women don't get the blues

**Author's Note:**

> i absolutely love kali and i thought her dynamic with eleven was really interesting so here's something set right after eleven leaves to go back to hawkins!
> 
> hope you like it <3

Kali wasn't the type of girl who cried.

She had done enough of it as a child, when she was weak and trapped and not strong enough.

("She's not strong enough," the scientists would whisper to each other when they watched her use her power, as if she something to be tried out and cast aside and couldn't hear them talking right in front of her.

"Not strong enough," they would say and she would be taken back to the tiny dark room where she lived and told to try harder, and she would cry and cry and cry until she was felt like she was drowning.)

When she escaped the lab, she promised herself two things: she would find a family and she would never let herself cry again.

So she found herself a family: a mother and a father and a brother who took her in and didn't ask where she came from and why she was always so upset. They clothed her and fed her and loved her as their own, and Kali would never forget that. But she outgrew them, because the sadness turned to pain and the pain turned to anger and the anger became too much for them to bear.

Kali understood. They didn't deserve any of it, so she kissed them goodbye and left.

The pain and anger didn't fizzle out, no matter how hard she willed it away. It festered until she felt like she was rotting from the inside out, and still, she wouldn't cry. She was strong enough not to.

And then she found a loophole.

Kali didn't cry; she screamed.

(Now, though, Kali was on the verge of tears.

She had a sister: a little sister who was powerful and beautiful and, perhaps most importantly, understood how it felt to never have the right to be normal, never have been given the chance.

Kali had felt a rush of affection towards Jane the moment she stepped foot in the hideout and pure, unbridled awe at how strong she had become, a far cry from the scared child she had left behind at the lab.

She was hurting and so was Kali, and Kali thought that maybe her family was finally complete. She and Jane could have taken back their lives from the people that stole it from them and healed each other, but in the end it hadn't been so simple. Hardly anything in life was, Kali found.

But still, Jane was family, and now she was gone.

The window reflected Kali's face as the van sped away from the cops, and she watched a single tear roll down her cheek, streaking the kohl smeared across her eyes.

She swiped at her eyes and hoped Jane would be strong and happy wherever it was she was going back to.)


End file.
